The Devil’s Law Case ACT 2. SCENE 3.

The action takes place at Naples
Enter Romelio and Ariosto.

Ariosto:
Your losses, I confess, are infinite,
Yet sir, you must have patience.

Romelio:
Sir, my losses
I know, but you I do not.

Ariosto:
'Tis most true,
I am but a stranger to you, but am wish'd
By some of your best friends, to visit you,
And out of my experience in the world,
To instruct you patience.

Romelio:
Of what profession are you?

Ariosto:
Sir I am a lawyer.

Romelio:
Of all men living,
You lawyers I account the only men
To confirm patience in us; your delays
Would make three parts of this little Christian world
Run out of their wits else. Now I remember,
You read lectures to Julio: are you such a leech
For patience?

Ariosto:
Yes sir, I have had some crosses.

Romelio:
You are married then, I am certain.

Ariosto:
That I am sir.

Romelio:
And have you studied patience?

Ariosto:
You shall find I have.

Romelio:
Did you ever see your wife make you cuckold?

Ariosto:
Make me cuckold?

Romelio:
I ask it seriously: and you have not seen that,
Your patience has not tane the right degree
Of wearing scarlet; I should rather take you
For a Bachelor in the Art, than for a Doctor.

Ariosto:
You are merry.

Romelio:
No sir, with leave of your patience,
I am horrible angry.

Ariosto:
What should move you
Put forth that harsh interrogatory, if these eyes,
Ever saw my wife do the thing you wot of?

Romelio:
Why, I'll tell you,
Most radically to try your patience,
And the mere question shows you but a dunce in't.
It has made you angry; there's another lawyer's beard
In your forehead, you do bristle.

Ariosto:
You are very conceited:
But come, this is not the right way to cure you.
I must talk to you like a divine.

Romelio:
I have heard
Some talk of it very much, and many times
To their auditors' impatience; but I pray,
What practice do they make of't in their lives?
They are too full of choler with living honest,
And some of them not only impatient
Of their own slightest injuries, but stark mad
At one another's preferment. Now to you sir;
I have lost three goodly carracks.

Ariosto:
So I hear.

Romelio:
The very spice in them,
Had they been shipwreck'd here upon our coast,
Would have made all our sea a drench.

Ariosto:
All the sick horses in Italy
Would have been glad of your loss then.

Romelio:
You are conceited too.

Ariosto:
Come, come, come,
You gave those ships most strange, most dreadful, and
Unfortunate names: I never look'd they'd prosper.

Romelio:
Is there any ill omen in giving names to ships?

Ariosto:
Did you not call one, The Storm's Defiance;
Another, The Scourge of the Sea; and the third,
The Great Leviathan?

Romelio:
Very right, sir.

Ariosto:
Very devilish names, all three of them:
And surely I think they were curs'd
In their very cradles; I do mean, when they were
Upon their stocks.

Romelio:
Come, you are superstitious.
I'll give you my opinion, and 'tis serious:
I am persuaded there came not cuckolds enough
To the first launching of them, and 'twas that
Made them thrive the worse for't. O, your cuckold's handsel
Is pray'd for i'th' City.

Ariosto:
I will hear no more.
Give me thy hand. My intent of coming hither,
Was to persuade you to patience: as I live,
If ever I do visit you again,
It shall be to entreat you to be angry; sure it will,
I'll be as good as my word, believe it.

Exit Ariosto. Enter Leonora

Romelio:
So sir. How now?
Are the screech owls abroad already?

Leonora:
What a dismal noise yon bell makes;
Sure, some great person's dead.

Romelio:
No such matter,
I is the common bellman goes about,
To publish the sale of goods.

Leonora:
Why do they ring
Before my gate thus? Let them into'th' court,
I cannot understand what they say.

[Enter two bellmen and a CAPUCHIN.]

Capuchin:
For pity's sake, you that have tears to shed,
Sigh a soft requiem, and let fall a bead
For two unfortunate nobles, whose sad fate
Leaves them both death, and excommunicate:
No churchman's prayer to comfort their last groans,
No sacred sod of earth to hide their bones;
But as their fury wrought them out of breath,
The canon speaks them guilty of their own death.

Leonora:
What noblemen, I pray sir?

Capuchin:
The Lord Ercole,
And the noble Contarino, both of them
Slain in single combat.

Leonora:
O, I am lost forever.

Romelio:
Denied Christian burial - I pray, what does that,
Or the dead lazy march in the funeral,
Or the flattery in the epitaphs, which shows
More sluttish far than all the spider's webs
Shall ever grow upon it; what do these
Add to our well-being after death?

Capuchin:
Not a scruple.

Romelio:
Very well then,
I have a certain meditation,
If I can think of't, somewhat to this purpose;
I'll say it to you, while my mother there
Numbers her beads.
You that dwell near these graves and vaults,
Which oft do hide physicians' faults,
Note what a small room does suffice,
To express men's good; their vanities
Would fill more volume in small hand,
Than all the evidence of church land.
Funerals hide men in civil wearing,
And are to the drapers a a good hearing,
Make the heralds laugh in their black raiment,
And all die worthies die worth payment
To the altar offerings; though their fame,
And all the charity of their name,
'Tween heaven and this yield no more light,
Than rotten trees, which shine i'th' night.
O, look the last act be the best i'th' play,
And then rest gentle bones; yet pray
That when by the precise you are view'd,
A supersedeas be not sued,
To remove you to a place more airy,
That in your stead they make keep chary
Stockfish, or sea-coal, for the abuses
Of sacrilege have turn'd graves to viler uses.
How then can any monument say,
Here rest these bones, till the last day,
When time swift both of foot and feather,
May bear them the sexton kens not whither?
What care I then, though my last sleeo,
Be in the desert, or in the deep;
No lamp, nor taper, day and night,
To give my charnel chargeable light?
I have there like quantity of ground,
And at the last day I shall be found.
Now I pray leave me.

Capuchin:
I am sorry for your losses.

Romelio:
Um sir, the more spacious that the tennis
Court is, the more large is the hazard.
I dare the spiteful Fortune do her worst,
I can now fear nothing.

Capuchin:
O sir, yet consider,
He that is without fear, is without hope,
And sins from presumption. Better thoughts attend you!

Exit Capuchin and Bellmen.

Romelio:
Poor Jolente, should she hear of this!
She would not after the report keep fresh,
So long as flowers in graves.

Enter Prospero

How now Prospero?

Prospero:
Contarino has sent you here his will,
Wherein a has made your sister his sole heir.

Romelio:
Is he not dead?

Prospero:
He's yet living.

Romelio:
Living? The worse luck.

Leonora:
The worse? I do protest it is the best
That ever came to disturb my prayers.

Romelio:
How?

Leonora:
Yet I would have him live
To satisfy public justice for the death
Of Ercole. O go visit him for heaven's sake.
I have within my closet a choice relic,
Preservative 'gainst swounding, and some earth,
Brought from the Holy Land, right sovereign
To staunch blood. Has he skilful surgeons, think you?

Prospero:
The best in Naples.

Romelio:
How oft has he been dress'd?

Prospero:
But once.

Leonora:
I have some skill this way.
The second or third dressing will show clearly,
Whether there be hope of life. I pray be near him,
If there be any soul can bring me word,
That there is hope of life.

Romelio:
Do you prize his life so?

Leonora:
That he may live, I mean, to come to his trial,
To satisfy the law.

Romelio:
O, is't nothing else?

Leonora:
I shall be the happiest woman.

Exit Leonora and Prospero.

Romelio:
Here is cruelty apparell'd in kindness.
I am full of thoughts, strange ones, but they're no good ones.
I must visit Contarino; upon that
Depends an engine shall weigh up my losses,
Were they sunk as low as hell: yet let me think,
How I am impair'd in an hour, and the cause of't:
Lost in security. O how this wicked world bewitches,
Especially made insolent with riches!
So sails with force-winds stretch'd, do soonest break,
And pyramids a'th' top are still most weak.

Exit.